Books like The Barn

I first loved Rebecca for its atmosphere, but what stayed with me was something more unsettling: how completely another person’s version of the past can shape the present.

I remember finishing it and thinking about how easily we accept a story when everyone around us seems to believe it. As a writer, I keep returning to that idea.

Du Maurier showed me that an absence can dominate a novel as powerfully as a living character, and that what people refuse to say can matter as much as what they reveal. That has stayed with me in my own writing about memory, silence, and family secrets.

I discovered Summer when I first moved to the Berkshires, and it quickly became my favorite of all Wharton’s novels. From the opening scene in which a playful June breeze whisks the hat off a young man, catching the attention of a local girl, I was captivated by this story of young love played out against a month of languid, sunny days filled with flowers, green grass, and leafy trees. But as summer edges into fall, the love story falters, giving way to a chilling encounter on The Mountain that has shadowed Wharton’s sensuously described landscape all along. 

I was drawn to this book because it’s loaded with atmosphere, and features hill folk like I do, with the difference that McCrumb’s characters inhabit the hills of Tennessee, while mine live in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. I especially like the way she weaves local lore and legends into the story, and how she reveals how the landscape appears to different characters, ranging from a long-ago woman, kidnapped by Indians who escapes and makes her way homeward, to a modern-day non-hillbilly who struggles to re-create her difficult journey. Then, there’s the way McCrumb adds a dash of the supernatural through a character with psychic powers—all of which have been grist to my fictional mill.

India Hill Brown is masterful in weaving together history and ghosts into this book.

When two friends stumble across a crumbling gravestone, they soon bring about the attention of its occupant, Avery, who happens to be a black girl who died at the time when even cemeteries were segregated.

If you want a lesson in history and diversity, as well as a spooky ghost story that will scare the pants off you—don’t forget The Forgotten Girl. 

I don’t mind a little bit of spice in romance books, but I also enjoy the sweeter romances that RaeAnne Thayne writes.

I agree that they have a real Hallmark flavour to them, and while I don’t write that style, I loved the Haven Point series. I find this author’s focus on families very satisfying; I love the relatability of her characters and the deep dive into the emotional connections between them.

I also like the way she handles more sensitive topics such as grief and depression. I think it’s really important to include such very important topics in romance novels, as I think the way the characters handle the situations they face can be an inspiration sometimes for readers who are going through similar dilemmas.

I love that this book incorporates riddles and haiku!

Kids can turn the pages and travel through the seasons (spring through winter) in an illustrated playful guessing game. “I am a wind bird/ sky skipper, diamond dipper,/ dancing on your string.” If you guessed a kite, you are right! A clever combination of art, riddles, and poetry wrapped up in a beautiful picture book package.

Spoiler Alert: Lion of the Sky is a firework! Wow! 

I was in second grade when I first read this Robert Frost poem in our classroom textbook. There was one magnificent illustration of a horse in a dark, snowy forest, with big snowflakes falling that captured my imagination. I was entranced by the language and images and remember memorizing the poem to recite. In 1978 Susan Jeffers illustrated the poem as a picture book, with evocative gray and white drawings. A later edition added some color. In this case, the beauty of the text is such that no illustrations are needed, but it is lovely to see the snowy village, the narrator stopping to make a snow angel, and the snow-laden tree branches. A great introduction to the poems of Robert Frost, who called this poem “my best bid for remembrance.” (Just FYI, you can listen to a recording of Robert Frost reading this poem on YouTube.) 

Eric Fisher has been Chief Meteorologist at WBZ-TV in Boston since April 2013, and was an on-camera meteorologist for The Weather Channel before that. In this 2021 book, Fisher is able to strike the perfect balance between the “what’s so” and the “why” behind these historic storms (as well as with other types of natural disasters affecting New Englanders). This rare quality, augmented by his meticulous research of historical accounts of these events, including the impressive array of meteorological records broken along the way, enables him to present an enjoyable, educational read—especially for the interested layperson. 

I love this book, a classic of French adolescent literature, which brings joy, sadness, a sense of yearning, and the dream of an ideal life. I consider it the ultimate exploration of the twilight world between reality and fantasy. 

An impressionable young man, on the verge of adulthood, stumbles across a costumed fete in progress in the grounds of a chateau. He meets and becomes infatuated with a beautiful woman. After returning home, he decides to embark on a quest to find the mysterious woman and the hidden world of ‘the lost domain’.

Caerphilly, VA, is utterly fictional, but you would never know it. I love visiting Andrews’ little town not only for the crazy characters, but the sense of heart and what a community could be if decent people were willing to work at it.

Even in the midst of some pretty nefarious behavior one is more likely to associate with small Southern towns, in this one, Andrews came up with an absolutely fabulous resolution that really speaks to how goodness and kindness can overcome even the worst of behavior.